“She doesn’t even cook, really,” I mumbled.
“Courtney,” said my father in his warning tone.
“Sure,” I said. “I’ll apologize. Consider it done.” I slipped off the stool and kissed him on the cheek. “Thanks for the talk, Dad.”
* * *
There were three days of school left before Thanksgiving, and they were excruciating. I was terrified Hugh would do something to Lexi, invent some trumped up disciplinary infraction and sic Farnsworth on her, or catch her alone in an empty classroom. But I hadn’t had a chance to warn her that he knew she was responsible for his little trip. Lexi hadn’t picked up the phone when I’d called her on Sunday, but I couldn’t tell her over the phone anyway. Mr. Grieves had warned us against committing anything related to 2C-I to any kind of bandwidth: no emails, no texts, no phones—not even land lines. You never know who’s listening was his mantra.
I’d caught glimpses of Lexi around school, but it seemed more important than ever to keep our friendship a secret. Crossing the refectory on Tuesday with Selena and Melissa, I realized we were going to walk right past Lexi, sitting alone at one of the heavy oak tables. Her face was lifting toward me, impossibly slowly, expectant.
“So,” I said, my voice too loud, bouncing off the vaulted, tiled ceilings even over the din of fourth period lunch. Melissa and Selena turned to me. I grasped desperately for something to say, anything that might hold their attention long enough for me to get past Lexi’s table in medias res and avoid greeting her. “What’s Gavin’s status this week?”
“Shit list,” groaned Selena. “He may or may not have spent more or less than eighteen full minutes in a bedroom behind a closed door with Lacey Stewart at some junior’s party last weekend. Hilary wasn’t there, of course, but the reports are incriminating.”
We were almost at Lexi’s table. I could see the smile breaking across her face.
“God, it’s all so tedious,” Melissa said. “Hilary has no self-respect.”
“You’re such a bitch,” Selena said, admiration in her voice.
We were at Lexi’s table now, and just out of the corner of my eye, I could see her watching us, her shining hair falling across her cheek as she tilted her head toward her lunch, as if she hadn’t been about to speak to me at all.
“Ew!” squealed Melissa. She had her wool coat draped over her shoulder, and one sleeve had trailed across the table as we passed, barely grazing Lexi’s sandwich but nonetheless becoming smeared with something gooey and white.
“Who eats mayonnaise?” Selena whined, loud enough for Lexi to hear, while Melissa swiped at her coat with a wad of napkins.
I followed them out of the refectory. I could feel her eyes on my back. The shame made my stomach twist and my cheeks burn.
* * *
Hugh was still the prodigal son returned, strolling the halls in a golden cloud. Some of his celebrity had rubbed off on Molly, and she lorded it over the two girls who played Betty Parris and Mercy Lewis and who had taken to mimicking her worshipfully. That afternoon, on the cast field trip to Salem, the three of them sprawled in the back seat of the bus, sipping the same brand of iced tea and tying their skinny scarves into Windsor knots.
I had lobbied Mr. Gillison to take us to Choate Island in Ipswich Bay, where the movie of The Crucible had been filmed. It was a wildlife refuge and was relatively barren except for a historic farm, which I thought was a better representation of Old Salem than the modern-day town that, although still quaint, had paved streets and a Starbucks. On Choate Island, Daniel Day Lewis had built the house where he and Joan Allen lived in the film, and he’d lived there until the film wrapped. I admired his commitment to the Method, even if the thought of not bathing for over a month was totally disgusting.
Despite my arguments for authenticity of atmosphere, Mr. G dragged us to Salem, which cashed in on its heritage every fall with a slew of Halloween-themed events, as if it actually had been a locus of black magic and not a depressing colonial outpost where a bunch of Puritans turned their repressed sexual desires and silly political machinations on each other. We were a month late for Halloween, and the whole town looked like a hangover. There were logos of witches on broomsticks everywhere even without decorations, and people wandered the street in period costume. We took a tour of the Witch House, which was totally misnamed—it was actually the house of the judge who put the so-called witches to death. But it was the only building that still stood that had any connection to the trials, and it had been restored to all its 17th-Century glory.
None of us paid much attention. We’d all been to the Old Manse; the House of Seven Gables; the homes of Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Paul Revere, and various Cabots, Quincys, and Adams’s dozens of times. If you’ve seen one spinning wheel, butter churn, or bundling board, you’ve seen them all. The tour was followed by a pathetic excuse for a trial reenactment. The actors were abysmal and the “jury” was comprised entirely of mannequins. I was disappointed. Mr. Gillison was no Nicholas Hytner, but I expected better of him.
Afterward, Mr. G herded us to Gallows Hill Park and set us free to wander. The park was supposed to be a memorial for those who’d been hanged as witches, but nobody knew where they’d actually been hanged. There was a baseball field and a few benches. All in all, it was a pretty lame memorial, and nobody cared. The two prim, high-strung junior girls playing Rebecca Nurse and Elizabeth Proctor sat down on a bench and reviewed vocab flashcards for the SATs. Rodney Fairchild led most of the male cast members in the direction of a small flock of Salem High girls sprawled in the grass smoking cigarettes and reading magazines. Susan Dashiel, who was Tituba the voodoo priestess (or innocent housemaid depending on your interpretation of the play), sat down alone on a rock and pulled out a notebook. She was one of those people who used “journal” as a verb.
I decided to walk to the top of the hill, which, while it might not have been the actual site of the hangings, was supposed to have a nice view. I needed a quiet spot to sit and work on my statement of purpose for NYU, and flanking either side of the granite slab commemorating our grim history were two green park benches. I sat down and pulled a notebook, a fountain pen, and a printout from the Tisch website out of my bag.
In no more than 500 words, describe your approach to your craft, both practically and philosophically.
In practical terms, my approach to acting for the past two months had been trying to be my old self. I was playing the role of the girl who had stood on the balcony that warm night in September, who’d teased her best friend for playing dress up and gossiped idly about the school slut.
But philosophically?
I wrote the words what if on a blank page. I had read a little Constantin Stanislavski my sophomore year, when I thought that performing Shakespeare meant I ought to take a very rigid and dogmatic approach to the theater. I got bored with that really quickly, but this I remembered: what if were supposed to be magic words to an actor. Stanislavski’s idea was that the actor was supposed to supply the answer: What if I were the spurned teenage lover of a pillar of a Puritan village? What if I lived in a community where witches were real? But to me, the words had always been magic for all the possibility they contained. Just asking what if was like opening a door and becoming a different person. What if I were Abigail Williams? What if I were Elizabeth Proctor? What if I were Desdemona, Gila, Holly Golightly, Lorelei Lee, Deanie Loomis, Alex Forrest, Veronica Sawyer, Iris “Easy” Steensma? What if I hadn’t had so much vodka at Melissa’s house that night? What if I hadn’t run into the darkroom the day I met Lexi?
Whatifwhatifwhatif. The words pounded in my head like white noise. Maybe I had thought they were magic once, that I really could open a cardboard door in a paper wall and cross from the wings to the stage, a whole new girl, but now they were cruel, ringing with things that might have been.
Suddenly I heard voices, and I was pretty sure they weren’t in my head. The giggles and murmurs of teenage girls echoe
d across the hilltop, and yet I was alone. Goose bumps rose on my left arm, where they always started when I got genuinely spooked. Then I caught sight of something moving in a tree at the edge of the woods that circled one side of the hill—flashes of green and purple among the golden fall leaves—and realized that a few of my cast mates had climbed onto the low-hanging branches. I shook my head and smirked at myself, embarrassed in front of no one that I’d managed to scare myself on a historically inaccurate hill in a kitschy town. I walked closer to the trees, trying to make out what the voices were saying. Molly Winslow wore a purple wool coat, so I guessed it was she perched up there, along with the two freshmen who played Betty Parris and Mercy Lewis.
“—last week,” Molly was saying.
“What did he take?” asked Betty Parris.
“We won’t tell anyone!” added Mercy Lewis.
“Absolutely nothing, and you’d better tell that to anyone who asks,” Molly replied with authority. “And the Jack Daniels wasn’t even his; he was holding the bottle for Jake Hobart. His parents think it was a bad reaction to some allergy medication, but Hugh thinks someone might have slipped him something.”
“No way!”
Molly did her best to sound jaded and worldly. “Pro hockey recruiting is very competitive. There were a few girls there whose dates went to other schools, so it is totally possible that Mike Wilson or Robbie Jaffe paid one of them to drug Hugh and get him expelled. Those are his main rivals within our school league.”
“Wow, that is so creepy,” said Mercy.
“Well, what’s even creepier is that he thinks someone’s been messing with his computer. All the drafts of his college essays got erased, like, at once.”
“Couldn’t that have been a virus or something?” asked Betty skeptically.
“Maybe. I hope so! I mean, I would be wicked embarrassed if someone read the emails I sent him.”
More giggling. I shivered.
“Still, he’s lucky that he was only suspended.”
“So lucky,” agreed Molly. “I mean, forget suspension, what if whatever he got dosed with had caused, like, brain damage?” She shook her head.
“Sucks that you didn’t get to go to the afterparty, though. I would die to go to a senior party.”
I was close enough now to see Molly shrug between the branches. She was really overselling her casual attitude, and I guessed that she’d been pretty excited about the Revelry afterparty, too. I shuddered to think how her expectations would have been dashed if Hugh had taken her to the party instead of getting carted away in an ambulance. Even if we hadn’t gotten him expelled, at least we’d prevented him from hurting Molly.
“He promised to take me to the Parkers’ party this Friday to make up for it.”
Oh, no.
“If I tell you something else, you have to swear you’ll keep it a secret.”
“Obviously.”
“Totally swear.”
Molly lowered her voice. “I’m thinking about having sex with him.”
Oh, shit.
“Ohmigod, really?!” squealed Mercy Lewis.
“He is pretty sexy,” said Betty Parris.
I bent over for a second and braced myself against a tree, trying not to throw up. As I righted myself, I stepped on a branch, and it snapped loudly.
“What was that?”
“Who’s there?” called Molly. “Remember,” I heard her hiss to the other girls. “If you repeat what I just said, I will murder you.”
“Hi, ladies,” I said, walking under the tree where they sat so they could see me. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to sneak up on you. It’s a little creepy up here, huh?” I was talking too loudly and too friendly to cover my nerves, and I saw Molly narrow her eyes at me just a little. “I mean, some poor innocent might have been hanged from that branch you’re sitting on,” I said.
“Ew!” squealed Mercy Lewis.
Molly rolled her eyes. “Elm trees don’t live for four hundred years.” She thumped the trunk of the tree. “This guy probably wasn’t even a sapling back then.”
“Still,” I said, “these were ‘once the Devil’s territories.’” I was quoting Cotton Mather, the jackass who’d made it so easy for everyone to believe that Massachusetts really was rife with witchcraft.
“I read Mr. G’s history handout, too,” said Molly. Mr. Gillison had handed out folders with various Xeroxed sources on the witch trials to all of us during the first week of rehearsal. “I think it was ergotism.”
“What’s that?” asked Betty Parris. Then she blushed. “I guess I didn’t read that part.”
“You know what LSD is?” asked Molly. Betty nodded. “So it comes from a fungus that grows on wheat. And, you know, back then they’d store wheat and stuff for the winter. So one of the theories on the witch trials is that when women would go to air out the root cellar or whatever, they’d start tripping. By accident, obviously. But they acted weird and talked about seeing things that weren’t there. So, people started thinking these were ‘the Devil’s territories.’” She said that last part sarcastically.
“That’s almost like what happened to Hugh,” piped up Mercy Lewis.
Molly and I both nearly snapped our necks looking at her. “What do you mean?” Molly asked, but I could tell she was really saying, Shut your trap, you silly freshman.
Mercy Lewis flinched under our gazes, and her cheeks got very red. “I just meant, the allergy medication. It’s sort of like the fungus, right? He didn’t mean to trip, but he got in trouble anyway.”
I saw Molly relax, now that she knew Mercy was referring to the “official” version of Hugh’s meltdown at Rivalry Revelry.
“I don’t think three days off school is quite the same as being pressed to death with giant rocks,” I said.
“Guess it’s a good thing people don’t still believe in the Devil,” said Molly. She looked at me darkly.
“Who says they don’t?” I asked.
Chapter 14
It was the following day that I finally got Lexi alone. Classes had been dismissed early for Thanksgiving break, and the school was as empty as I’d ever seen it; everyone had scattered to visit family or celebrate the free afternoon, a rare gift at Country Day. So it seemed safe to call her name when I saw her down the hall, to catch up to her and stand close enough to speak softly.
“I’ve got to talk to you.”
“Um,” Lexi said, and bit her lower lip. She brushed a few strands of hair out of her eyes, and her many silver bracelets sang as they slid down her arm. “Hi?”
“Hi,” I said. “Sorry. We need to talk.”
“Sorry for not saying hi just now? Or sorry for blowing me off the last few days?” Lexi’s winter hat was a beret. She adjusted it to a jauntier angle and her bracelets rattled inside the cuff of her coat.
“Both,” I sighed and put a hand on her arm. “Listen.” I spoke as quietly as I could. “Hugh knows it was you. If Ted saw us talking—”
“Wait, what?” Lexi grabbed my hand on her arm and squeezed. She was surprisingly strong. We both jumped as a door slammed down the hallway, but no one appeared.
“Let’s get out of here,” I hissed.
“Okay, okay. Come on.”
I didn’t think anyone had seen us in the hall—the door we’d heard could easily have been closed by a teacher or janitor—but Lexi pushed me toward the front door before she ducked out the side door that was nearer to the juniors’ parking lot. I kept going down the hall to the lobby. When I got outside, I could see her Caddie idling down the drive where Lexi had pulled out of the lot. I ran down to it and pulled open the passenger door. She was slouched down behind the wheel, poking at her cell phone speedily with both thumbs.
“We’re crap at being stealthy,” I said. “Half the school would recognize this as your car whether they could see you behind the wheel or not.”
Lexi tossed her phone into my lap and steered the car out of the Country Day gates. “Sorry. The Volvo’s getting a tune up,” she s
aid sarcastically.
“I’m kidding, kind of,” I said. “I don’t think anyone saw us just now.”
“It doesn’t matter to me if they did,” Lexi said sharply, and put a cigarette between her lips.
I blushed and looked down at my lap. “It’s not like I’m ashamed to be seen with you—”
“No, I get it. You need to act like everything’s the same as it ever was. Since you never ventured outside your social circle before, you can’t now—you might have to admit that something’s changed. That you’ve changed.” She smirked bitterly and tapped her cigarette in the ashtray. “You would be able to pretend it didn’t happen to you.”
“No. No, I can’t” I looked at Lexi’s face, but she kept her eyes on the road, “I think about it every minute of every day.” She dropped the smirk. “But look: if Hugh suspects you’re responsible for drugging him at Revelry, and he definitely thinks you and Farah have been messing with his phone and computer, then what’s he going to think if you and I are suddenly palling around? You know how school is. It’s not like he wouldn’t notice.”
“Then he’d come gunning for you?” she finally met my eyes, raising one brow. “Maybe if he did, old Teddy boy would wake up.”
I suppressed a shudder. “Well, I mean… If Hugh doesn’t know you and I have talked, and he thinks I’m just going to keep acting like nothing happened, then he won’t be on his guard around me. I might get another chance. Not to drug him, but something. We’ll think of something.” I said firmly.
“I don’t know about you,” Lexi said, drumming her perfect oval nails on the steering wheel, “but I need to work out some aggression.” I glanced across the gearshift at her, thinking she couldn’t possibly mean what I thought she meant. “You need to be home any time soon?”
“No. My parents work at a homeless shelter in Boston the day before Thanksgiving every year.”
“Such Samaritans,” said Lexi. “Good. I’ve got you all to myself for a few hours, then.”
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